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Adrien Brody
| birth_place = New York City, U.S. | education = Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School | alma_mater = Queens College | occupation = Actor, producer | years_active = 1988–present | parents = Sylvia Plachy (mother) }} Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor and producer. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at age twenty-nine, making him the youngest actor to win in that category. Brody is also the only male American actor to receive the César Award for Best Actor. Other successful films that Brody has starred in are The Thin Red Line (1998), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), and Predators (2010). He is a frequent collaborator of Wes Anderson's, having starred in three of Anderson's films, The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). In 2017, he appeared in the fourth series of the BBC historical drama Peaky Blinders. Early life Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York City, New York, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photographer, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter. Brody's father is of Polish Jewish descent; Brody's mother, who was raised as a Catholic, was born in Budapest, Hungary, and is the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother. Brody was raised "without a strong connection" to Judaism or Catholicism. As a child, Brody performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien". He attended I.S. 227 Louis Armstrong Middle School and New York's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous children with whom he associated. He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Brody attended Stony Brook University before transferring to Queens College for a semester. Career Taking acting classes as a child, by age thirteen, he appeared in an Off-Broadway play and a PBS television film. After appearing in Bullet in 1996 with Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke, Brody hovered on the brink of stardom, receiving an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his role in the 1998 film Restaurant, and later praise for his roles in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. He received widespread recognition when he was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). To prepare for the role, Brody withdrew for months, gave up his apartment and his car, broke up with his then-girlfriend, learned how to play Chopin on the piano, and lost twenty-nine lbs (13 kg). The role won him an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him, at age twenty nine, the youngest actor ever to win the award, and to date the only winner under the age of thirty. He also won a César Award for his performance. Brody appeared on Saturday Night Live on May 10, 2003, his first TV work, during which, he controversially gives an improvised introduction, while wearing faux dreadlocks and a jamaican accent for Jamaican reggae musical guest Sean Paul (without Lorne Michaels permission), causing him to be banned. Other TV appearances include NBC's The Today Show, and on MTV's Punk'd after being tricked by Ashton Kutcher. After The Pianist, Brody appeared in four very different films. In Dummy (released in 2003, but originally shot in 2000, just prior to his work in The Pianist), he portrayed Steven Schoichet, a socially awkward aspiring ventriloquist in pursuit of a love interest (his employment counsellor). He learned ventriloquism and puppetry for the role (under the tutelage of actor/ventriloquist Alan Semok) convincingly enough to perform all of the voice stunts and puppet manipulation live on set in real time, with no subsequent post dubbing. He played Noah Percy, a mentally disabled young man, in the film The Village, by M. Night Shyamalan, shell-shocked war veteran Jack Starks in The Jacket, writer Jack Driscoll in the 2005 King Kong remake, and father-to-be Peter Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited by Wes Anderson. King Kong was both a critical and box office success - it grossed $550 million worldwide, and is Brody's most successful film to date in monetary terms. He also voiced Jack Driscoll in the video game adaptation. Additionally, Brody played a detective in Hollywoodland. He has also appeared in Diet Coke and Schweppes commercials, as well as Tori Amos' music video for "A Sorta Fairytale". On January 5, 2006, Brody confirmed speculation that he was interested in playing the role of The Joker in 2008's The Dark Knight. However, Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. decided instead to cast Heath Ledger in the role. He was also in talks with Paramount to play Spock in J. J. Abrams Star Trek XI, but it ultimately went to Zachary Quinto. In 2009, he starred in Splice, a science fiction film written and directed by Vincenzo Natali. Originally a Sundance film, Splice was adopted by Dark Castle Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros. In 2010, he played the star role of Royce in Predators (a sequel to the original Predator), directed by Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez. In 2011, Brody starred in a Stella Artois beer ad called "Crying Jean" that premiered right after half-time of the Super Bowl XLV as part of Stella's "She Is a Thing of Beauty" campaign. He appeared in Woody Allen's 2011 Academy Award-winning comedy Midnight in Paris as Salvador Dalí. On January 16, 2012, Brody made his debut as a runway model for Prada Men Fall/Winter 2012 show. In 2014, Brody collaborated again with Wes Anderson in the Academy Award-winning The Grand Budapest Hotel, where he played Dmitri. He received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or in a Movie for portraying the titular character in Houdini, a History channel miniseries. The following year, he starred as Tiberius in the Chinese film Dragon Blade, which grossed $54.8 million in its opening week in China. In 2017, it was announced he would join the cast of the fourth season of the BBC crime drama Peaky Blinders. On August 4, 2017, he received the Leopard Club Award at the Locarno Festival. The Leopard Club Award pays homage to a major film personality whose work has made a lasting impact on the collective imagination. Personal life In 1992, Brody was seriously hurt in a motorcycle accident in which he flew over a car and crashed head-first into a crosswalk. He spent months recuperating. He has broken his nose three times doing stunts; the most recent was during the filming of Summer of Sam. He dated Michelle Dupont, a music industry personal assistant, from 2003 to 2006. She was his date to the 2003 Oscars. Brody began dating Spanish actress Elsa Pataky in 2006. For Pataky's 31st birthday in July 2007, Brody purchased her a 19th-century farm in Central New York state that was remodeled to look like a castle. Brody and Pataky were featured at their New York home in a 35-page spread for HELLO! magazine in October 2008. The pair broke up in 2009. In 2010, Brody sued the Giallo filmmakers, alleging that they failed to pay his full salary. Filmography Film Television Video games Music videos References External links * * }} Category:1973 births Category:20th-century American male actors Category:21st-century American male actors Category:American Academy of Dramatic Arts alumni Category:American expatriates in England Category:American male child actors Category:American male film actors Category:American male voice actors Category:American people of Hungarian descent Category:American people of Czech-Jewish descent Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:César Award winners Category:Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School alumni Category:Living people Category:Jewish American male actors Category:Male actors from New York City Category:People from Woodhaven, Queens Category:Queens College, City University of New York alumni Category:Stony Brook University alumni Category:Method actors